The Sixers almost brought a 20-point lead in the second half, but Bradley Beal’s 60 points were not enough to stop Philly from winning 141-136 over the Wizards.
Here’s what I saw.
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good
• The Philadelphia offense has just been a delight to watch so far this season. Of course, there are goods in which their inexperience shines and looks like a team that has not received a real training camp. But an average trip on the floor is fun to watch for Philly this season, something I couldn’t have imagined when I watched a team that started four different players who wanted the ball in the post.
While part (well, a lot) of their success on Wednesday was due to the fact that Washington was a landfill for toxic waste in defense, these guys only play an excellent brand of basketball. The ball rarely stays, there are far fewer wasted dribbles and blocked goods and even when certain guys do, they continue to look to play for the good of the group.
Take, for example, Seth Curry, who came out to start the game on fire and never gave up in the first half, dropping 20 points in the first two quarters. Even in the middle of his heater, there were opportunities for him to call his own number and let it fly as he passed to hunt down a better shot for Tobias Harris or Danny Green.
(I’m divided on Ben Simmons’ decision to reward Embiid for running on the ground in the first half. Curry was wide open on the wing and felt it, so anyone thinks he should have taken the ball with which I will not argue with, but you must continue to stimulate the big boys when they run.)
They live the mantra of their head coach, who doesn’t care how they score and who scores as long as they put points on the board.
• Curry really deserves a spotlight for his Wednesday game and the crazy numbers he makes available to start the year. He will absolutely return to Earth at some point – no one shoots more than 50% of the three on this type of volume for an entire season – but man forces the opposing defense to make really difficult decisions.
On Wednesday night, it turned in the unlikely vicinity of Philadelphia in the fourth quarter, shaking a quiet third period to lead the Sixers in points in a short time, taking advantage of the visitors’ leak defense. If anything, Sixers should have made sure to bring him more ball, Curry being open for a few swing passes that never came to him.
The only criticism I have for him is the same one I had throughout the opening: it’s okay if he plays a little more selfish. Being the first guy on the team is a good thing, but no one would be upset if one of the best shooters in the league threw a few questionable shots in the middle of a radiator.
• Joel Embiid moved away from what appeared to be a clunker of the show at the start of Wednesday night’s game, missing the first six photos and beating several goods in an almost comical way. After returning from the bench, he was given the opportunity to take a technical free throw and it seems that it was all that was needed to change the night for the better.
Five consecutive marks later, Embiid was in the area, combining the pass he threw in the first quarter with his killer scoring instinct in a single cover. This beating on Thomas Bryant was just disrespectful:
Embiid had 15 points by the end of the first half and it was a much more typical night for him at both ends, once he found his foot in offense.
It was his insertion into the game over time that really caught Philly in the end. The Sixers were hanging by a thread after the wizards finally punished them for not killing the game, and Embiid came to provide some stability on both ends of the floor.
The big guy’s improved fitness level came when it mattered most, with Embiid dominating the paint and still summoning the energy for a huge transition block in the closing minutes of the game. He wasn’t the only guy to produce on Wednesday after any stretch of the imagination, but there were echoes of games in the past tonight, with Embiid feeling like the only thing between the Sixers and a total collapse.
There weren’t many recoveries in one night with this very hot shoot, so his line doesn’t look like a typical Embiid night, but it was still a dominant effort. The anger continues.
• Shake Milton was undoubtedly the pre-season player (of course short) and held a show on the opening night, but had a hard time shooting the ball in the weeks since. Coming into the game with a 27.3 percent deep mark, Milton returned to Philly’s back end, a welcome sight, and his best player fought early.
The third-year guard went down the old path – to the free throw line and with the intermediate play, twisting and turning inside the bow with the help of Dwight Howard to clear a path. Milton was the only guy who didn’t break up completely on the bench on Wednesday, which is the nicest thing you can say about anyone in the second unit.
The river
• It was interesting that Rivers never seemed interested in guarding Ben Simmons over Bradley Beal.
Five years ago, I saw that I wanted to stick with a guy like Russell Westbrook, when he was a weird athlete who could compromise your defense. Nowadays, the former MVP is more of a paper tiger, a guy who still harms, but is often more likely to shoot his team. outside of a game.
I could even understand the initial decision to have Danny Green on him in a similar match. But it quickly became clear that the Green-Thybulle combination offered very little resistance, and what better use for your first All-Defense type than to have him follow a guy who shoots lights?
Despite the 32 points in the first half from Beal, Rivers did not waver, and Beal continued to cook in the second half, reaching the mark of 50, with a few minutes left to solve in the third quarter. He did it in every way possible, hitting three, shooting, scoring cuts, throwing a few free throws – it was a pretty offensive poster for a guy whose team was overtaken almost all night.
Philly continued to comfortably outdo the Wiz for a while, but the strategy seemed particularly pointless, as Washington really had nothing (or no one), and the Sixers seemed to have a solution ready for the problem. Wouldn’t you rather take the chance to say, Rui Hachimura beats you, a guy that Simmons sometimes guarded on Wednesday?
The Sixers did nothing to stop the attack, and if it weren’t for the combination of hot shooting and Washington’s awful defense, they could have paid for it. Washington slipped back into a game where they had no business, and the decision not to make Beal’s life more difficult will be a big point of discussion after the game. At least he finally got cold in the fourth, and if you’re charitable, maybe Rivers just tried to tire him out in the first 36 minutes.
(By the way, holding on to his weapons is kind of Doc Rivers MO, for better or worse. Get used to his kind of thing.)
• With all that being said about the assignment issue, Simmons didn’t do much to change the game in the second half because he started to get out of control. The rivers that kept him away from Beal’s mission is one thing, but his offensive limitations raised his head ugly after a first half in which he was actually quite effective as an attacker.
In the first 24 minutes (and the last eight with Embiid), Simmons managed to control the pace both in midfield and in transition, responding to several buckets from Washington with fast scores in reverse. He was active on and off the ball, creating for himself and others. Then he hit the break, and the openings that were there closed a little, and Simmons’ lack of ingenuity in the middle of the field with the ball in his hands slowed Philly’s offense to a crawler.
I give him credit for this – he helped Philly reunite him in a short time, with an excellent combination of playing with Embiid, rediscovering his form when they needed it most. But once again, I thought he was a passenger for too much play.
• Defending Philadelphia as a team was not so good even outside of Beal’s performance and it was the first night I think you could say that the effort really affected them. The late twists, the hesitation to fight through a screen and, worst of all, a few pieces in which the wizards just overcame them in transition and got easy scores for their troubles.
In the front of a back-to-back and against a team, it seems I know how to run against in time, I will not read too much into it. But I was slightly interested in how they would handle the high-level guards when they got to the hard part of their program, and that wasn’t exactly a good data point in that regard.
• The biggest culprits in the lost leadership were almost all on the bench. Apart from Milton, almost every other guy in the second unit was lost at sea to the wizards. Dwight Howard was ineffective in defense, Tyrese Maxey never had enough ball to do much with her, and Matisse Thybulle was the unfortunate victim of the Beal show, trying her curse and coming short anyway.
And that was it with Rivers shocking his lines a little more due to rotating injuries. Tobias Harris and Simmons were the boys who spent time with heavy appearances on the bench and none was enough to support them. Ugly night for the secondary cast.
ugly
• Correct Warning: I wrote the paragraphs below before Sixers suffocated most wizards to wizards, so yes, there are certainly more negatives than this after that abysmal defensive effort.
When the only real complaint you can make about a team in the first eight games is that you want to see them prove themselves against “real” competitions, you know they started at the beginning.
Next week, they will be tested. Thursday’s game against Brooklyn isn’t as exciting as Kevin Durant’s, but that game is followed by a meeting with Denver and Nikola Jokic, the Atlanta Hawks newcomer, and a pair against Jimmy Butler’s Miami Heat. Things are about to get a little more interesting and I welcome the chance to judge this team against top caliber opponents.
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